In the
Pacific Northwest trout, steelhead and salmon receive the most
attention from fly fishers. Warm water species are considered to
by many anglers to be inferior to cold water species. While
large mouth bass don't fight as hard as salmoids, they offer exciting
top water fly fishing. Each summer, Patty and I take a couple of
days and fish for bass with surface poppers. Each trip is a
learning experience. We try plan our trip to coincide with with
water temperatures that are most comfortable with the highest
population of bass in shallow water around the edge of the body of
water we are going to fish. This is usually the pre-spawn period
around mid-May. This year work got in the way and we weren't
able

to get away
until June 2-3. In the lake we fished, mid-day water
temperatures were 71-72 degrees and many of the bass had spawned and
headed back into deeper water. The fish that were left weren't
real aggressive. To make matters worse, there was a pretty stiff
breeze. That made positioning our pontoon boats difficult.
Pinpoint casting accuracy also suffered. Interestingly, we found
most of

the fish along
banks that ran parallel with the prevailing wind. Very few fish
were found along shore lines that ran perpendicular to the wind.
After some trial and error, the best tactic seemed to be to row to the
upwind end of a shore line and then drift down the shore casting
toward the shore as you went. This didn't give us a lot of time
to work any one particular area and didn't allow for many second
chances for shots that were missed. I started off with with my
good

good old
favorite size-6 Black
Chewy Pop. That brought several good hook-ups, but also many
refusals. Past experience told me that bass that refuse a
certain size popper will often take a popper that is smaller in
size. A size-10 Bee
Colored Panfish Popper was knotted to the end of my leader.
Several very nice fish including my best

bass
of the trip, a 3 1/2 pounder, were landed with this fly. It was certainly
easier to cast in the wind than the larger fly. Patty had also
started out with a Black #6 Chewy Pop. She commented to me about
getting lots of refusals and I told her about my experience with the
panfish popper. She went to a size-8 Black
Mega Whammy Popper and it proved to be the best producer. I
soon changed to that one also. Trimming off the long flowing
silicone legs to give the fly an even smaller appearance seemed to
increase its effectiveness even more. This popper proved to be
so effective that after a day and a half of fishing, I had caught so
many bass that they had literally chewed through the epoxy coating on
the plastic head. The second morning I decided to perform an
experiment. I fished one long stretch of bank with a size-6 Fluorescent
Orange Mega Whammy. About a dozen bass from 10" to
15" were caught. I then tied on the chewed up smaller black
Mega Whammy and fished the same area again. About three dozen
bass from 12" to 18" were caught. Many takes were
splashy as one would expect when popper fishing, but many others were
very quiet as the fish would lightly suck the fly from the
surface. Patty hooked a very large fish we estimated at better
than six pounds on her size-8 black Mega Whammy. Unfortunately
after a long battle, this bass buried itself in the weeds and broke
the leader. That was the best fish we saw on that trip.

There wasn't
supposed to be any trout in this lake. As I trolled a marabou
leech deep along the weeds looking for bass there was a sharp yank
that tore twenty feet of line from my reel. To my surprise a
chrome bright 18" rainbow vaulted five feet into the air. Ten
minutes later it was followed be another. After the forth
rainbow came to my hand, I called Patty on my walky-talky. She
rowed to joined me from the other end of the lake. We caught a couple of more trout and then it was
over. We commented

on our good
luck. That didn't prepare us for what was going to happen in the
evening. The sun went down around 7:30pm. All of a
sudden the surface of the lake in front of our tent erupted with
dozens of rising trout. As we got into our pontoon boats the air
filled with thousands of
Chironomids.
There were so many insects that the high pitched whine of their wings
was clearly audible. They ranged in sizes from #8 to #16.
The colors varies widely from black, brown, tan, olive, red,
yellow & orange. We tied on some V-Rib
Midge Pupae to the same floating lines and stout leaders that we had
been using for

bass bugs.
The gratification was instantaneous. We were both hooked up at
once. We were using different color flies, but similar strategy;
spot a feeding fish, figure out which way it was heading, lead it four
feet with a cast, let the fly settle, twitch it a couple of times and
wait for the pull. The action continued into the dark and then
stopped as abruptly as it had started. Early next morning there
were trout rising to Chironomids again. The hatch
was sparse and there were only a few fish rising. We each caught
a

number of
nice trout before the wind came up and blew the hatch away. It
was good fishing, but nothing like the night before when we had
visited lake fishing "Valhala".

Tilley
Hats?"All I can
tell you is that my Tilley
LT6 is the most comfortable, most practical summer hat that I have
ever worn! It is extremely lightweight. It breaths and
feels cool. I sets on my head without binding. The
darkened under-brim cuts glare. With the well thought-out strap
system it stays on my head in the wind", Mark Bachmann.

Used
Rods, Used Reels consigned by
customers like you.Are you lusting for a new
piece of fly fishing equipment that you can't afford?
Do you have a fly rod or reel that you are no longer using?
Is it in your way, cluttering up a closet?
We will help you sell your used fly rods and fly reels.
Hundreds of qualified buyers come to our Bargain Page every day
looking for deals on fly fishing equipment. Some of them are
looking for the kind of equipment that you no longer need. Why
don't you consign your old equipment to us for resale? Bring
your used rods and reels to our store and we will put them on
display & sell them for you. That will save you the bother
of posting ads, answering phone calls and dealing with strange
people. We will do that for you. If you apply the money
that you make from your consignment to goods purchased from The Fly
Fishing Shop, we don't extract any fee for our consignment service.
You get to set your price. If you take the money from your sold
goods then we ask for 20% commission. Either way you win.
Now you have turned your liabilities into assets and cleaned out
your closet in the process.
We will ship consigned goods, but will charge full amount for
shipping.
Goods bought with consignment money are treated as any other sales
and are shipped "standard
free shipping".All items first come -
first served - limited to stock on hand - no exceptions!
All sales are final. Back
to Bargainsemail1-800-266-3971Last Up-dated 06/08/03